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Terry Kirby
Operations Director and
Chief Submersible Pilot,
Hawai‘i Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL)
Thursday 28 February
Refreshments at 6:30 pm •
Program at 7:00 pm
11 Arizona Memorial Drive,
Honolulu, HI 96818
Find out how the Hawai‘i Undersea Research Lab discovered three out of the five Japanese submarines returned to Pearl Harbor after Japan's surrender.This FREE lecture is open
to the public.
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Feb 22: Are shark attacks on the rise?
A spike in the number of unprovoked shark attacks in Hawai‘i in 2012 — nine, rather the usual three or four per year — was just by chance, considering the “millions and millions of hours” people spend in the water and the very low number of attacks, according to Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) assistant researcher Carl Meyer, who has studied tiger sharks for 20 years. Tiger sharks were thought to be territorial, but tagging data showed that they in fact quickly roam over very large areas. Because culling (hunting and killing sharks in the immediate area after an attack) is unlikely to catch the attacking animal, it was discontinued.
Watch the video at Time.com. Image courtesy of Time.
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Scott Rowland
Geology & Geophysics (G&G)
Tue 26 Feb • 7:30 pm
NASA Pacific Regional Planetary Data Center (PRPDC),
POST 544, UH Mānoa
This FREE lecture is open to the public.
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Feb 19: Infrasound study of 15 February 2013 Russian meteor
Milton Garces, Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) associate researcher and director of the University of Hawai'i Infrasound Laboratory (ISLA), is posting emerging analyses of the 15 February 2013 meteor blast above the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia. The shock wave, resulting from the break-up of the meteor, smashed windows and collapsed roofs, injuring an estimated 1,200 people in this city of 1.1 million people. Although the low-frequency sound waves from the event cannot be heard with the human ear, 11 infrasound stations detected it. Follow Garces’ posts about the blast — one of the loudest, deepest exploding meteor sounds ever recorded — in Twitter under @isoundhunter and in the blog Infrasound Huntress.
Read more about it in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser (subscription required) and at HIGP, and see the video at KITV4. Image courtesy of Milton Garces; click on it to go to the posting.
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Feb 19: Klaus Wyrtki • 1925–2013
SOEST Oceanography Professor Emeritus
Download the obituary PDF here.
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Feb 15: Microbe may be elevated to symbol of Hawai‘i
Flavobacterium akiainvivens might join the list of Hawai‘i state symbols if a recommendation by the state House Committee on Veterans, Military, and International Affairs and Culture and the Arts becomes law. House Rep. James Kunane Tokioka, who represents southeastern Kaua‘i, introduced House Bill 293, which calls for establishing and designating the microbe, found only on ‘akia (a flowering shrub endemic to Hawai‘i) as the official state microbe — the first in the country. It was discovered and named by a 2012 Iolani School graduate, Iris Kuo, in collaboration with a team of UH scientists that included Stephanie Christensen from Oceanography.
Read more about it in The Maui News.
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Feb 13: Congratulations, Shimi Rii and Alice Colman!
The Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) is pleased to announce the awardees of the inaugural Denise B. Evans Fellowships in Oceanographic Research: Shimi Rii from C-MORE (left) and Alice Colman from G&G (right). Rii, a graduate student with Matthew Church, is researching the role of gradients in controlling plankton community structure. Coleman, a graduate student with John Sinton, is researching the effects of the rate of magma supply on mid-ocean ridge volcanic eruptions and magmatic systems. Congratulations!
Read more about it on the HIGP home page and in the UH News, and see the award photo gallery. Photo courtesy UH Foundation; click on it to learn more about the Fellowships.
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Feb 07: Ocean FEST and TECH — FREE event for middle, high school students
Are you a middle school or high school student interested in learning about careers in the ocean, earth and environmental sciences? C-MORE invites you and your family to attend a FREE hands-on Ocean FEST and TECH (PDF) event at the Mānoa Experience on Saturday 23 Feb.
For more information please see the flyer PDF. Space is limited, so please register soon!
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Feb 05: Global warming: greenhouse gases vs solar heating
Examining global precipitation changes over the last millennium and projections to the end of the 21st century in computer climate simulations, a team of scientists led by Jian Liu (Chinese Academy of Sciences, CAS) and Bin Wang (IPRC researcher and Meteorology department chair), report in the journal Nature that global warming from greenhouse gases affects rainfall patterns differently from warming from solar heating. For example, global rainfall has increased less over the present-day warming period than it did during the Medieval Warm Period, even though temperatures are higher today.
Read more about in UH Mānoa News, EurekAlert!, RedOrbit, and AccuWeather; read the Nature abstract. Image courtesy of Shang-Ping Xie, SOEST.
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Charles “Chip” Fletcher, professor of Geology & Geophysics and SOEST’s Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, joined a discussion led by host Dan Boylan on PBS Hawaii’s INSIGHTS on Thursday 14 February at 8 pm to discuss the latest on climate change.
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Feb 02: HIMB coral video wins NSF/Science award
Congratulations! The 2012 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge Honorable Mention for Video goes to Christine Farrar, Zac Forsman, Ruth Gates, Jo-Ann Leong, and Robert Toonen, all at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), for their video “Observing the coral symbiome using laser scanning confocal microscopy.” Without using dyes, images of the fluorescence by molecules in living corals and their symbiotic red algae under different wavelengths of light were captured by a confocal microscope and compiled into three-dimensional, time-lapse animations.
Read more about it at the NSF and Science news sites, and in the Guardian, NBC’s CosmicLog, UH Mānoa News, and Dive Professionals.org. Image courtesy of HIMB; click on it to go to our videos page.
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Feb 01: Congratulations, Penny Chisholm!
Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education (C-MORE) Co-PI Sallie “Penny” Chisholm received the National Medal of Science at a ceremony on Friday 01 February 2013 at the White House (watch the video here; Penny is at 11:01).
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Feb 01: First climate change textbook for college students
Charles “Chip” Fletcher, professor of Geology & Geophysics and SOEST’s Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, has released the first edition of Climate Change: What the Science Tells Us (published by J. Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ). Fletcher offers the first real textbook to present the science surrounding climate change at the right level for an undergraduate student. “Our climate is changing NOW in rapid and dangerous ways. But by and large, we are not teaching the current generation of students about the reality of this phenomenon,” stated Fletcher. “Without this knowledge, our ability to manage the impacts of a changing climate is limited.”
Read more about it at EurekAlert! and UH Mānoa News. Image courtesy of J. Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ.
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“The no longer lonely planet: mixing it up for the Mars menu”
Kim Binsted, PhD student in the Geology & Geophysics and associate professor in Information and Computer Sciences, UH Manoa, is a member of the HI-SEAS Research Team. Listen to the interview with her on HPR’s “The Conversation” recorded on 29 January 2013. Read more about the Hi-SEAS recipe contest at UH Mānoa News.
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Jan 28: Studying deep-sea nutrients with new instrumentation
The Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT) has been making near-monthly observations on ocean climate and biogeochemistry for nearly 25 years, and will soon celebrate its 250th cruise to its ocean outpost Station ALOHA, located approximately 100 km North of O‘ahu. This long-term effort has resulted in one of the world’s only, and most valuable, records for documenting climate-linked environmental change in the open ocean. Among the many findings are changes in ocean nutrient and carbon pools at episodic, seasonal, and sub-decadal time scales — changes closely linked to hydrographic variability, including climate-sensitive processes. Through its history, HOT has also been at the forefront of implementation, testing, and validation of new analytical methodologies and field and laboratory instrumentation.
Read more about at AZoSensors.com and at the HOT web site. Image courtesy of HOT/SOEST.
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Jan 27: Hurricane sound waves could aid forecasting
Hurricanes generate sound waves detectable through the air thousands of miles away, which could be a good way to measure the wave conditions near these storms, a new study suggests. In principle, listening to these very low signals can help researchers continuously monitor ocean wave activity and track marine storms. “The strongest infrasound signals come from the storm center, which is the most dangerous portion of the hurricane,” said Ocean and Resources Engineering (ORE) PhD student Justin Stopa, lead author of the paper in JGR: Oceans, with co-authors Kwok Fai Cheung, Milton A. Garcés, and Nickles Badger.
Read more about it in Our Amazing Planet. Image courtesy of NASA/Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.
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Jan 25: Partnership awards $1 million in coastal hazard grants
One million dollars in coastal hazard research and education grant money is being awarded to coastal communities throughout the US-affiliated Pacific Islands region to help plan for, respond to, and recover from coastal hazards such as storms. This funding opportunity is made possible through a partnership between the UH Sea Grant College Program and the Coastal Storms Program (CSP) of the Coastal Services Center (CSC), a unit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Read more about it in Hawaii Reporter and the UH Sea Grant NOAA CSP page. Image courtesy of Steven Businger.
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Jan 24: Breakthrough predicting E. Asia summer monsoon rain
A team of scientists led by Bin Wang, International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) researcher and Department of Meteorology chair, has made a breakthrough for the spring prediction of both the summer monsoon rainfall over East Asia and the tropical storm activity near East Asian coastal areas. These two weather phenomena are controlled by fluctuations in the Western Pacific Subtropical High, a major atmospheric circulation system centered over the Philippine Sea. The study was published online on in the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences.
Read more about it in the Hawaii Reporter, Environmental News Network, UPI.com, the UH Mānoa News, and in the IPRC press release (PDF). Image courtesy of UH Institute for Astronomy.
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This special supplement to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser showcases the new UH Innovation Initiative — HI2 — and highlights several units and programs of the School, including the Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education, the Hawai‘i Space Flight Laboratory, the Hawai‘i Institute for Geophysics and Planetology, the UH Sea Grant College Program, the Vog Measurement and Prediction project, sea level and climate change research, the Hawai‘i beach safety web site, the International Pacific Research Center, and more.
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Jan 21: Fridge, other tsunami debris wash ashore in Hawai‘i
The Japanese government has estimated that the March 2011 tsunami, which was triggered by an underwater earthquake, swept about five million tons of wreckage out to sea. While 70 percent appears to have sunk offshore, the rest is floating in the Pacific Ocean. Wind acts on similar objects in similar ways, according to research by Nikolai Maximenko of the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC), so while all of the tsunami debris went into the ocean at the same time, some objects drift across the Pacific faster than others. That results in clusters of similar objects showing up in at the same time.
Read more about it in Live Science; see a KITV4 video and slide show (bottom of the page) of tsunami debris in the Huffington Post. Image courtesy of Nicholas Mallos, Ocean Conservancy.
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Jan 17: Sylvia Earle and need for manned ocean exploration
“Legendary explorer and oceanographer Sylvia Earle is saying goodbye to the ocean floor, but are machines good enough to take her place?” Tony Dokoupil reports in Newsweek on Earle’s last dive with the Hawai‘i Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL) and its two manned submersibles: Pisces IV and Pisces V. The article joins Earle and the submersibles’ crews as they explore the unique environment of the deep sea floor around Hawai‘i. In video of the submersibles in action on their last dive on 15 December 2012, Earle passionately explains why we still need manned ocean exploration. Chris Kelly, HURL program biologist, is also highlighted.
Read more about it in Newsweek. Image courtesy of HURL.
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Patricia Doyle
Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics
and Planetology (HIGP)
Tue 22 Jan • 7:30 pm
NASA Pacific Regional Planetary Data Center (PRPDC),
POST 544, UH Mānoa
This FREE lecture is open
to the public.
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Wednesday 16 January 2013 • 5–6 pm
Listen at 760 AM on your radio or streaming live at www.hawaiistomorrow.com
Please join Carlie Wiener, COSEE Island Earth program manager, as she hosts her talk radio show “Hawai‘i’s Tomorrow”. Read more about this month’s show on SOEST’s Facebook page.
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C-MORE PI and director Dave Karl is the 2013 recipient of the National Academy of Science’s Alexander Agassiz Medal for his “acknowledged leadership in establishing multidisciplinary ocean-observing systems, for detection of decadal regime shifts in pelagic ecosystems, and for paradigm-shifting insights on biogeochemical cycles in the ocean.” (C-MORE Co-PI Penny Chisholm was the 2010 recipient.)
UH Oceanography chair Kelvin Richards notes that, “This a very prestigious award made every three years … established by Sir John Murray in honor of his friend Alexander Agassiz. Dave joins the ranks of illustrious past recipients who include Bjerknes, Bigelow, Sverdrup, Stommel, and our very own Klaus Wyrtki.”
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Jan 07: Anonymous gift funds chair in microbial oceanography
An inspired anonymous donor has made one of the largest gift commitments to the University of Hawai‘i by a private individual to benefit UH students and research. Included in the $9.2 million gift are funds for a chair in microbial oceanography. “This gift will be used by a team of scientists at UH and the Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education (C-MORE) to promote our research and education missions,” said C-MORE director and professor of oceanography David Karl. “In addition to doing pioneering, frontline research and microbial oceanography, our Center has developed innovative tools and techniques for educating the public at large.”
Read more about it in the UH News and in the UH Foundation press release. Image courtesy of C-MORE.
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